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Gizmodo has released a short bullet-point list of the features the iPhone doesn’t have. These are not just annoyances, like the fact that you can’t really dial a number without bringing up a virtual keypad; they’re full-blown problems that should remind everyone that, when it comes to copyright protection, only Apple sees themselves as more invulnerable than Microsoft. I’ll explain in a minute. First off, here’s the list:

• Songs as Ringtones
• Games
• Any flash support
• Instant Messaging
• Picture messages (MMS)
• Video recording
• Voice recognition or voice dialing
• Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
• One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)

Stuff we already knew it didn’t have
• 3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
• GPS
• A real keyboard
• Removable battery
• Expandable Storage
• Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)

Let’s recap. Clearly, Apple went for the multimedia experience here, and a keyboard and buttons would’ve just gotten in the way. Now, why doesn’t the battery come out? Didn’t Apple learn from its previous iPod debacle that preventing customer access to easy replacement for a part that is known and expected to wear out is a terrible business tactic? And on a similar note, it’s great to have 4 or 8 gb of storage built in, but what if I want to save some mp3s on a miniSD card on my computer, then put it in the iPhone to play? Never mind that, actually. iTunes’ “you don’t really own the song you just bought” mentality will surely wipe any musical bit or byte right off any external card or device. It gets better, too. Since you only bought your iTunes mp3 to listen to on mp3 players, you can hear it on your iPhone, but not as a ringtone. Why? Because then they can’t sell you a 30-second excerpt of the same song for another $2 fee.

Furthermore, it’s clear that the phone itself isn’t the leap forward in technology that Apple claims it will be. The recent ad campaign which features Youtube on the iPhone cleverly masks the fact that the phone doesn’t have Flash support, meaning it couldn’t play Youtube videos through its mini Safari browser, only through the proprietary app. Other multimedia content, in other words, is out of reach, making the Youtube offering just a semi-useless carrot to entice the teen crowd. Also, Mossberg’s review of the typing says that, while the iPhone did a good job of guessing what he’d typed (it can’t be possible to push the right ‘virtual’ key on a tiny touchscreen keyboard all the time), it wasn’t as smart as the Blackberry’s word recognition.

Finally, of course, the thing only runs on AT&T’s recently acquired EDGE network, which certainly won’t help me where I live, and probably will only work (and slowly) for people in major metropolitan areas. Plus, the iPhone’s $499 (for the 4gb) or $599 (for the 8gb) price tag is deceptive when compared to other phones, since there’s no way to get a discount on the iPhone with a new service contract. In other words, a BlackJack, which lists at $199, but is free with most contracts, is actually a full $500 cheaper than the iPhone, not merely $300. Just another way for Apple to suck more of its annual tithe out of its devout following of trendies.

apple, iphone, features, flash support, youtube, at&t, edge, cingular, expandable storage, mp3 ringtone

NBC Nightly News last night featured a segment about the recent publicity storm surrounding the anti-Hillary Clinton ‘1984′ ad running on YouTube. In the segment, NBC made the video out to be a work of ‘professional’ quality, into which someone must have put ‘a lot of money and effort.’ The potential harmful effects of the video were discussed, as it was argued that the presence of ‘BarackObama.com‘ at the end of the clip would cause people to believe that the movie was the work of Obama’s official campaign.

Hearing newspeople decrying the difficulty of verifying a source makes me pretty sick, if not all that surprised in this day and age. Let’s study the evidence:

If you just look closely, you’ll see that the end of the video merely lists Obama’s website. It makes no attempt to indicate that the work is copyrighted by Obama’s campaign, or in any way affiliated with it. For all intents and purposes, it could be the URL for this website listed there (oh, how I wish). That wouldn’t make it my work. Also, the idea that the video was commercially produced through a significant effort of time and money is ludicrous. Anyone with the least bit of familiarity with digital video can tell that the only effect used is a simple matte where Hillary’s face replaces the one in the original commercial. Everything else is stock. The video could’ve been made (and probably was) in under a day, using only the free iMovie software available on any Mac.

In other words, this video is the digital equivalent of the handwritten notes you forged from your parents so you could skip school. And yet, national journalists are hailing it as another potential pitfall into which even the most erstwhile, fact-checking young Peter Parker might stumble. The amount of ignorance that surrounds virtual communities like YouTube is appalling–so much so that we’ve forgotten everything we’ve ever supposedly been taught in school about checking your sources for accuracy and veracity, and are now willing to believe something just because somebody with the YouTube username ’speechprofessor’ decided to (sort of) claim it was an official Obama spot. It used to be you could count on your news anchors to sift through the piles of evidence and unearth the gem of truth. Now it just seems they’re willing to grab any chunk of shit in those piles, as long as it’s been labeled ‘gem.’ Makes you wonder how they handle the actually ambiguous stories…

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